


From Here, I Can Pretend

by Hermit9



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Fluff, Love Letter to Canada, M/M, Nicky and Joe have been together for a long time, Nostalgia, Philosophies of love, Pre-Canon, Vacation, can you go home if home no longer exists?, missing year, trauma processing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28161585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermit9/pseuds/Hermit9
Summary: After a mission that goes to all shades of hell, The Guard goes to ground. Joe and Nicky split off as one, aiming for safeground and enough time to breath and regain some of their sanity.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 30
Kudos: 184
Collections: Discord Community Archive





	From Here, I Can Pretend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [treefrogie84](https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/gifts).



> Thank you to [Treefrogie84](https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84) for the beta and for holding my hand through this entire thing.

It ends bad and it ends bloody. Most of the grit and viscera isn’t theirs, soaking through clothes and squelching underfoot. It doesn’t matter. It never matters. Until it does. Until the smoke clears and they are picking their way through dust and debris. The bastards had rigged the whole place to blow, some primitive set-up with unstable homebrewed dynamite, and they’d been doing this since before black powder made its way out of China, they knew primitive…

Until the smoke clears and they get a proper look at the aftermath, at the broken chunks of concrete and rebar, machinery twisted into a many jawed trap. 

Until Andy speaks for all of them in a single word.

“Fuck.” 

They don’t argue. There is a pained whine from Joe, so Nicky reaches to touch his arm beneath the flaking blood. His hand slips down until their fingers can link, until Joe squeezes back. 

“I’m here,” his hand says in silence. 

Booker curses under his breath, takes a swig from his flask. They gather what can be gathered, but there is not much left, not enough for closure. Not enough to face those left behind, those who will have to grieve. 

It is an evil thing, for a parent to have to bury a child. Children. So many of them and none coming home. 

They limp out, last ones standing like always. Andy doesn’t speak at all, not when they stop to burn their bloodied clothes. Not when they set down for the night, settling into rotation to keep watch. 

Andy doesn’t speak for two whole weeks, not a word. 

It takes all of them to coax her back. Being there, comforting Booker when he dreams of sunless seas and wakes up cold, gasping. Making sure Andy sleeps too, eats something, drinks something, walks in step like an automaton. 

“They were expecting us,” she says, when she finally does speak. 

“No one expects us,” Booker says from his chair across the room. The safehouse is small and stuffy, not meant for four adults to be piled up on top of each other. Not this century at least. 

“Are you sure? The rig wasn’t to stop us, or any other rescue team. It was meant to kill the hostages, maximum casualties.”

“What are you saying, Andy?” Nicky turns to her. In the kitchen Joe stops the humming and lowers the heat on dinner so he can hear the answer.

“I don’t know what I’m saying. Something isn’t right.” She stops, grabs for the open bottle on the table and takes a swig of it. 

Nicky winces. Booker got this particular batch, some no label moonshine brewed in a bathtub or something equivalent. Barely fit for human consumption, it burns equally going down and coming back up. 

“Want to look into it? Take them out?” Joe asks. He’s leaning against the edge of the stove, arms crossed.

“No. After _that,_ it’d be too visible, too obvious. We need to go to ground. Disappear. No job, no tracks, no signal.” 

“How long?” Booker asks, his voice rough. More than any of them, he hates the hiding. Hiding means splitting up to make smaller targets, harder to pin. It means more time alone with his ghosts and the specter of sleep. 

“A year, at least. Maybe more.” She doesn’t look at any of them. Grabs the bottle, her coat, her duffle, and walks out of the safehouse. Andromache never says goodbye. She can’t stand the word, the implied finality of it. 

“Shit,” Nicky says, and he rubs at his jaw with the back of his hand.

“Yeah. I’ll drink to that.” Booker raises his glass in salute. 

* * *

They file away into the night, him and Joe. Booker stays behind at the safehouse, drinking and making his own plans. Nicky worries, he always worries. Liver failure is a painful way to go, no matter how much they heal and can fix the poison. The body remembers the pain.

They find a port. Some things don’t change, or only change on the surface. The stench of diesel and rust mixing in with leftover bait, spilled beer and fish guts. This is the wrong kind of port for fishermen, but always there is the presence of gutted fish. For sport, for wasting time, or food in the bellies of the truly desperate. 

Nicky leans into the shadows of the alley, made darker and starker by the bright neon advertising from the main street. He keeps an eye on the barely awake pick-pocket kid on the other side of the alley. So far he’s been keeping his distance, street instincts warning of a prey that can bite back. 

The other eye he keeps on Joe as he sits at a table outside of the coffee shop. He is talking to a sailor, crew member, maybe even captain, though the democratisation of fashion has made telling harder from a distance. The sailor’s face looks unconvinced by the deal Joe is trying to reel him into, but already the rest of his body is betraying him. Interest, greed, a touch of fear. Nicky smirks. Yusuf Al-Kaysani has a silver tongue few men could match and more than enough silver to cross the palm of those who could. Watching him work never got old. Between him and Andy, they have a finger on the pulse of most of the underworlds. On all of the parallel societies, the underground networks that have spanned the planet since the first day a law was set to stone, or parchment, or clay. They might have started one or two, in their wakes. 

Joe settles back on the chair, brings up the disposable coffee cup to hide his smirk even as he nudges the bag by his chair towards the other man. Twenty-four hour coffee barely deserves the name, barely more than burnt bean sludge. The signal works all the same. Nicky whistles, sharply, to make the kid jump in alarm and forget he was pretending to sleep. In slow, telegraphed movements he pulls out his wallet and pulls out a few bills, letting them flutter to the ground. Nicky winks and steps around the corner, senses alert but confident he isn’t being followed. He retrieves their bags and meets up with Joe, alone now at his table.

“So?”

“We’ll have to work, a little. In exchange for passage, food, a bunk.”

“Think the papers we have will back that up?”

“No,” Joe shakes his head and crumples the cup. “But they’ll hide us from the inspector. As long as we can be quiet.” There’s an unhappy slant to his eyes, a downturned curve to his lips.

“That last part was too easily gained?”

“Yes.” 

“Then we’ll have to be on the lookout for anyone else trying to be very quiet.” Nicky nudges Joe’s leg with his feet until the frown turns to a smile. They wait for dawn and for their ship to sail. 

The shipping container is outright cosy, as far as being illegally smuggled goes. There are holes for ventilation cleverly disguised as rusty patches and the lock has been modified to be opened from the inside. That detail alone stands out; this is a complicated process that has been used more than once. A cheap mattress and some mildew-eaten blankets have been pushed against the far side. 

Joe makes a displeased noise, low in his throat and Nicky turns on instinct, eyes darting across the aisles and up the stacks of steel around them.

“Not what was promised?” he asks, scanning for an immediate threat.

“No, no, it is,” Joe answers with what could almost be a whine to his voice. “But I’d like to take you on a cruise, properly. With an open bar, music, and buffet tables.”

“Nothing to do but sunbathe and people watch?” 

“Yes. Nice things to spend this money we ask for what we do. Instead of… this.”

“Ah yes,” Nicky says with a smile, reaching for Joe’s hand. “How terrible. To be with you, where there are no witnesses and no interruptions for a few days.”

“Three days, until we reach international waters and out of patrol range.” 

Nicky doesn’t grace that with an answer. He steps inside, drops his bag by the makeshift bed and tries to hide the shudder as the heavy steel of the door closes, as the lock engages. He busies himself by digging into a pocket for glow sticks, breaking and shaking them until the space is filled with chemically green glow. The door can be opened, he checked _himself_. They are hidden, not trapped. There is a way out. 

The downside of the size of modern commercial ships is that Nicky can barely tell when they are moving. The rumbling of the motor really is the only difference, coming from deep below deck and shifting everything on board subtly until the tons and tons of metal sync up in a type of not quite stillness. Nicolò misses the creaking of the wood, the snap of the sails and the ropes. Most of all he misses the fact that the image of a gigantic steel coffin wasn’t quite so easy to bring to mind. 

“You’re troubled,” Joe says, calling out to him.

“Am I that obvious?"

"Only because I have had time to study all the nuances of you." He pauses as Nicky snickers. "But you're welcome to try and make me forget so I can learn them anew."

"How do you propose I do that?"

Joe smiles and that smile is brighter than the artificial light scattered on the floor. "I think you have a few ideas, _tesoro_."

Nicky does. They fall asleep, much later, tangled in each other and held safe until the knock comes to call them for their side of the bargain. 

* * *

Ship maintenance hasn’t changed much, all things considered. Sure the navigation and controls are now fancy electronics and self calibrating, but the core of the ship, its guts and heart are still cogs and grease and hydraulics. The principles aren’t any different than when they were first made popular, when they cut ocean travel down from seasons to months to weeks. 

It still means grease under Joe's nails as clever fingers coax the engines to purr. It means mopping spills and sticky, foul-smelling, leaks on the deck.

It means endless water and endless sky, stars pouring across the night. Out here, even the best efforts of industrial light pollution cannot mask the heavens.

“Still stargazing?” Andris asks, as he comes up to Nicky, extending a thermos cup in a friendly gesture. He’d been the one to meet with Joe, to accept them on board and hide them from authorities. He didn’t ask any questions, acted as if it was all part of standard operating procedures. It helped. The crew took their cue from him and didn’t ask questions either, kept their gossip away from him and Joe. 

Nicky takes the cup and a careful, exploratory, sip. Andris usually brings something wam: tea, or coffee, or salty broth from a cube. But sometimes it is closer to bathtub vodka that feels like scorching a layer of his throat and he swears makes his healing kick in. Tonight is orange pekoe tea, cheap and oversteeped but offered in good faith. “It makes me easy to find. At least until we hit territorial waters in a few days?” He turns to face Andris as he speaks.

“You’ve been keeping track on GPS? Those things can track back, you know?”

Nicky shakes his head and looks up. “The stars,” he says. 

Andris laughs at the answer. “Of course.” 

He thinks it’s a joke, a bit of clever wit. Nicky wishes he could tell him of learning how to navigate by those lights and how to calculate angles. How even the stars have shifted but not enough to completely make him lose his bearings. 

“We’ll be in American waters in three days, you’ll have to hide as we get nearer the coast,” Andris continues and the moment is gone. “We’ll be hitting some choppy water first, so I came to get you in and lock the door behind you.”

“Am I that obvious?” 

“We’ve never had a deck this clean. Are you satisfied with your inspection?”

Nicky nods. Whatever else they are smuggling or carrying under a thin varnish of legitimate business, it is not people. Excluding Joe and himself. Nicky cares very little about the rest, about the drugs and bootlegged DVDs or counterfeit luxury goods. 

That night the stormfront finds them, or perhaps the implacable march of burnt oil drives them straight to it. The wind howls around the ship, whistling through the containers in different tones like choirs of banshees. It meets the sudden rage of the sea, waves taller than men, taller than _buildings_ , crashing over the deck and battering the lower windows until it seems like the glass and rivets have no choice but to give way. 

The crew gathers in the eating area, crowding together in the narrow accommodations. Not the entire crew, of course, the officers are all on the bridge, steering and navigating a safe path through. Or so Nicky hopes.

Cards are brought up, along with old ledgers and bottles of dubious vodka. Nicky catches Joe’s eye and shakes his head. He’s not in the mood for fleecing anyone tonight. He settles with his back to the wall instead and watches. Joe joins him after a few hands, careful to leave the table without ruffling too many egos. He’s a warm presence by his side, a wall against the chill of the rage he can feel outside. Carefully, keeping watch on the rest of the room, he leans into him, linking their hand under the cover of the table. 

A few of the men notice, but a stern look from Andris stops any comments and for that he is grateful. Joe squeezes his hand, hard enough to hurt, enough to quell a shiver Nicky hadn’t been aware of. 

“Peace,” he says, low enough to keep it only between themselves. “We’re as safe as can be.” 

“Are we?” Nicky asks, eyes straying to the window where the rain has killed any and all light, swallowing the world in darkness. 

Joe hums and squeezes his hand again. He doesn’t let go until the night passes and the sun brings back tamer seas. 

Three days later, as promised, they cross over into American territorial waters. Joe leans against the door of their hide-away, one hand on his weapon, almost not breathing as the custom officials board the ship. They can do little to track their movement, can only imagine as they seek out reasons for fines or bribes. Eventually the Americans leave and the ship continues on its route. More days spent in darkness and fake light, until they leave the sea behind and, slowly, crawl up the infinitely calmer river. 

Nicky gathers their bags, ties the waterproof shell over them. He feels bad about leaving without saying good-bye to Andris. The man has become a friend, on the superficial and safe level they can have friends. But it’s better this way. The less of a trail they leave behind the better. 

They watch the shore slip by. Most of the visual references are long gone, lost to new developments and time. The land itself has shifted in some places. But man-made markers and signals serve them well enough. There are no more ice floats when they dive overboard, but the water is still cold. 

“Fuck,” Nicky says when he breaches the surface. Yusuf doesn’t say anything, avoiding a mouthful of water. It is probably wise. They use the current to carry them, preserving their strength as much as they can, but both are exhausted by the time they wash up against the eroded rocks and concrete ice breakers.

Laughter shakes through Joe as he regains his breath. Nicky wishes he could join, but the wrong taste of the water he swallowed remains. Industrial contaminants, out of season algae, and other things he’d rather not think about coats his mouth and tongue and he spits against the concrete wall in the hope of clearing it. 

“We have got to find a better way to get here,” Joe says when he stops laughing. There’s concern in the hand that squeezes Nicky’s shoulder. 

“Yeah, we really do,” Nicky answers with a chuckle. When the nausea stops, he slings the bag over his shoulder and starts picking his way through the rocks.

The wharf hasn’t seen commercial freight in over a century and is now cosily enclosed in a large park. It’s late enough that the floodlights over the two baseball fields have been turned off. But there are still street lights, here and there, casting sodium yellow cones of brightness. Two on the fort made of fieldstones, and one by the mill that still stands less than two hundred meters to its left. They’ve both been preserved in ways that kept nothing of their original purpose. The mill has been turned into a tourist information booth and the fort into a podium for a bronze figure celebrating the winning side’s story of a massacre. Nicolò doesn’t believe that there is any exposed land that hasn’t tasted blood and screamed with war. They are not that naive. 

It is sufficient, sometimes, that _this_ was not their war, not their fight nor their blood. 

Past the mill, the road curves up in a lazy spiral. Nicky can see the touch of the local historical society in the facades of the houses. The wood siding is the same as he remembers, though the paint is newer and brighter. He’s happy to see the atelier for the wooden rowboat still standing. The scent of sawdust has permeated the air, sharp and fresh. Still in use. Joe clicks his tongue at the black cat sitting on the stairs, who is watching them pass by. The cat doesn’t react other than swish his tail in a generously royal acknowledgement. 

Up the slope, the illusion of preservation vanishes. The highway is narrow but still shockingly modern against the haze of his memory. The disorientation fades as they keep walking. The curve and the slope are the same, as are the old bones of some of the buildings. 

Joe takes point, leaving Nicky to scan around them as they cross the road. Not everything has been washed out despite the slow erosion of a century. The trees are bigger, their bark coarser as the naked branches reach for the stars in broken lines. But here and there are also echoes of past days, laughter of children now long dead, and chipped stones to betray a story told over drinks at dinner. 

The church hasn’t changed. The asphalt parking lot and the concrete abstract sculpture to its side are new, but the building itself untouched. Symbols of faith are often prone to stasis. They turn in the church’s shadow, stepping around what used to be the stern bricks of the apothecary and something in Nicky relaxes. The house itself has been preserved, they knew that. But there is knowing through pictures and letters, through the cold uncaring screen of modern technology. And there is knowing by standing on the steps of a safehouse that could, once, be called almost a home. 

Joe scuffs in annoyance at the door before kneeling down. Nicky sees the problem when he glances: a modern lock has replaced the one they hold the key for. It’s not surprising, just annoying. He shifts to the left, needlessly shielding Joe from the empty street, masking his movements from potential observers. It doesn’t take long for the lock to open, picked with the same grace and dexterity Joe uses to take Nicky apart. He smirks. Maybe not tonight. They both smell of their travel and of the river water. For now he wants nothing except a warm shower and a bed. 

The door swings open on silent hinges and they walk inside, closing it behind them with a deliberate degree of slam. While the exterior of the house has been preserved, the interior has changed, been modernised like the lock. Heavy, surprised, footsteps from the second floor as well as the click of switches and the sudden flood of electrical lights telegraph the approach of the house’s current resident. On paper and by most accounts, its legal owner as well. 

_“Y’a quelqu’un?Qu’est-ce qui se passe, tabarnak?”_

The man stops at the top of the stairs. He is wearing faded grey shorts and a t-shirt so worn that if once a print had been laid on it there was nothing left. He has a house robe on, also in a shade of grey, open with the ties trailing behind him. His hair is long and curly and messy from sleep, giving the overall impression of a cat bristling and making its fur puffy to face a threat. He holds a candle stick like a weapon. It is solid silver and heavy, if not actually meant for home defense.

Nicky laughs at the overall tableau, before Joe shoves his shoulder. He sobers up quickly, but doesn’t hide the smile still dancing on his face. 

_“Tu peux déposer les armes,”_ Joe says, keeping his voice as casual as he can. Nicky can see the mirth dancing in his eyes too, but Joe is too _diplomatic_ to laugh at their host. At least not on the first night, after breaking in, _“Ce n’est que nous, Francis.”_

 _“Un téléphone, ça vous tentais pas câlisse? J’ai failit faire une simonac de crise cardiaque moi-là.”_ Francis puts down the candlestick and closes his robe with a huff, pulling at the belt in an exaggerated movement. “I wasn’t expecting you for another two days,” he continues on a more constrained tone. 

Nicky shrugs, “We made good time. Is everything ready?”

“Yeah, yeah. Fresh sheets, soap in the bathroom. Keys on the table next to you, not that you need them, apparently,” Francis runs a hand through his hair, which only unsettles it further. “I’m gonna make myself a drink. You want one?”

“No. Thank you,” Nicky declines, as graciously as he can. He waits for Francis to walk down the stairs with as much dignity as he can muster and turn to walk further into the house, to the kitchen. He can’t fault the man for his reaction. There is a world of difference between knowing there are shadowy puppet masters that lurk at the edge of your life, and realizing they are very much real. It has been a bit less than a decade since Francis took over as steward of this land. Not terribly long for him and Joe. Close enough to being a lifetime, for others. 

* * *

For two weeks they do little more than sleep. Francis gives them plenty of space, making sure to resupply anything they might need. But Nicolò and Yusuf retreat to some semi-feral state of being. They eat and rest, overwhelmed with the feeling of being relatively safe. This is someplace they can stop. There is nowhere else to be, no next step, no mission, no need to be on alert. And so they crash, shaking in the night as spring fog rises on the river and the anonymous boats that navigate it signal in loud ultrabass blasts. The body remembers the pain and the fear and the pain and the pain and the pain. They take turns comforting each other, as all of those memories resurface now, clamoring to be processed. To be dealt with, witnessed. 

This time it’s Nicky who has to be the anchor. Yusuf gets lost in the flow of memories, sketching them as fast as he can so he can expunge them from his mind. Nicky sits by him until the charcoal and the pencils and the inks are gone. He kisses abused fingertips and whispers about the light and the things that wait beyond the night. 

They climb out of this isolation with the first days of May. The rays of the sun turn warm, warm enough that Joe doesn’t feel the need to wear layers of sweaters and Nicky can comfortably shed down to a single jacket. Francis is outside already, removing plastic wraps and other artifices of winter from the larger trees.

“I was thinking of going to pay my regards to the sisters,” Nicky says one morning, as he helps Francis fold a large plastic tarp. “Do you know what the visiting hours are these days?”

“The congregation moved out, about… five or six years ago?” Francis answers without looking up. “It’s a hospice home now. Damn shame too, I never could get the figs newton recipe out of Sister Alice.”

“Oh,” Nicky says. He falls silent for the rest of the morning as he readjusts one tiny part of his memories. Joe took him on a walk earlier that week, a kind of meandering circuit to relearn the lay of streets. That in itself was a shock. A few of the colony-era houses are still there, defiant with white-washed stones and bright tin roofs. The cemetery, too. Though there are more rows of stones to crowd it, and the evergreen in its center towers in ways the saplings of his memory could barely hope for. 

Even in the “historical” core of the village, where the streets are barely wide enough for them to walk shoulder to shoulder, there is new construction. The design committee tried to nod to the past but it stands all wrong, modernity dressed in vintage-blue trappings. And around that core new developments have grown like fungus. Where he remembers farm land there is nothing now but bland beige houses crowding together around garages, cars, and the laughter of young children. 

Joe isn’t as perturbed by the changes. He remains as exotic here as the first time they set down roots. Nicky doesn’t know why the background noise of ordinary bigotry is so soothing for Joe. It makes him want to lash out, to make people turn their gaze away when they stare. To stop the whispers and the pointing he catches at the corner of his vision. Maybe it’s not the offense that soothes Joe. Maybe it’s Nicky’s own tendencies to want to defend him. 

By June, they have coaxed the land fully back from winter. Suddenly the list of things to do becomes a race and despite the sun hanging around for longer and longer in the sky, somehow they always run out of hours. It takes a surprising amount of energy to make things look as serene as they want it. Nicky guesses there’s an aphorism, somewhere in there. Maybe Joe figured it out, but he’s been declining learning the ticketing system and the online registration. 

Instead, Nicky most often finds the love of his life cursing in extinct dialects and fighting the most tenacious of wars: man vs slug. The invasion was slow but inescapable and now Joe has a whole arsenal of beer traps, broken egg shells, and salt lines carefully hidden along the flower beds. 

“Do you think we should tell him about the lily beetles?” Francis asks one afternoon. Joe is on his hands and knees, carefully laying double sided copper tape on the underside of rocks. He spent the last two days sketching the light and shadows as the day turns so that the glint would be hidden from the visitors.

“Absolutely not,” Nicky answers. “I will help you spray the neem oil if you can get him busy with dinner. Otherwise he’ll refuse to sleep in order to keep up the patrols.” 

Francis laughs. The sound makes Joe look up from his task. He’s not quite sure what’s being discussed but he meets Nicky’s eye and smiles. Nicky knows he’ll spend many evenings on bug patrol, if it means Joe continues to smile like that. To smile because he’s sun-warmed and has dirt under his fingernails and in his hair. Like he has nothing to reassure himself or Nicolò about, no guard to keep up. 

They should take vacations more often. 

There are two broken weeks in summer where what most of the modern world considers a normal rhythm stutters and jumps with extra days off. It is a strange thing to witness sometimes, the low key panic at the idea of having time, even for a day. It makes for good business, Francis says. It’d even be worth the higher wages, if he was paying them. The warmth has finally properly settled in enough for the blooms to explode in colors all around the winding paths. And yet the nights are starting to lengthen again, minutes stolen out of the light. 

The woman first comes to visit the garden on the first of those days. She’s on her own, which isn’t strange, but is rare enough. Most of their customers are small groups of two or threes. Families mostly, and couples. She doesn’t speak to anyone, even pays in silence. She stands and stares at the stained glass window for long enough that Nicky worries about the possibility of an absence seizure. But she moves away before he can make his way down from the house.

He sees her again that night as the town gathers with the sunset. There is a collection of rental tents down in the park by the river. They sell cotton candy, greasy fries, barely cold beer, and thin flexible glow sticks with equal success. The townsfolk settle on blankets along the grassy slopes in a kind of unspoken organized chaos. There are no hushers, no official lines, and yet in a few hours a whole ecosystem of flannel blankets takes form. Children run up and down the embankment and as the sun sets, they get less and less visible save for the glow sticks around their necks and arms. 

"Look at all the Will-o-wisps,” Joe says with glee. The soft hair of his beard tickles against Nicky’s ear as he points with his chin at the kids.

They claimed their own blanket space very high, barely a few steps from the street. Joe leans against the trunk of an ash tree that has seen at least three generations of gatherings. The brick and mortar wall of the town hall protects their left flank. Nicky leans against Joe, his back to Joe’s chest. He gently presses Joe’s knee whenever they get a double look or someone decides to go sit further away. 

“Think they’d lead us to treasure or to death, _habibi_?” Nicky asks with a tease. 

"They are _children_. The answer is always both."

Nicky laughs at the undeniable, if unpopular, truth. The sound draws the attention of the woman to his right. She is sitting alone, on one of those vinyl cushions Booker swears makes a difference when he drags them to some sports event. She looks sad and then quickly looks away, rubbing at her eyes. Nicky wonders if he should say something but is distracted by the start of the celebrations. There is a temporary stage erected against the fence of the far field and whatever the local band lacks in musical accuracy, they make up for with energy. 

Joe mutters against Nicky's hair about the clear harp abuse and musical theory that has been archaic for a century. He's not really offended, just playing it up because it makes Nicky smile. When the music fades, it takes with it the floodlights. For a few minutes there is only the moon and the glowsticks, now on a lot of the adults too. The crowd quiets in that lull, highlighting the anticipation that is running through the gathering.

The sky explodes with colors and the crowd cheers. Greens and reds, sparkly golds that leave trails of impossible palm trees against the sky. Joe presses Nicky against his chest, a solid anchor against the percussive force of the explosions. There is no attack here, no undue danger, save maybe from stray embers and the smoke. If Nicky squints he can make out the lone volunteer running along the river’s bank with a torch, lighting the fuses. There is no coordinated artistry, just the strange magic of gunpowder alchemy.

“The weapons were a mistake,” Joe says, and Nicky feels him speaking more than he hears him, deafened by the bright white flare of magnesium that also leaves spots in his eyes. “This is what the powder should have been named after. All the man-made stars, not guns.”

From across the river, the ghost lights from other towns rise up in a staccato counterpoint. For a moment, there is rumble in the air: sounds carrying from much bigger, richer, cities to their west. There and gone, fake thunder bouncing down the river like some celebratory hot-wire.

The fireworks fizzle out in a grand finale of roman candles and colorful blooms, made grand by the sheer volume more than coordination. The crowd splits as the smoke clears. The families with younger kids and the elderly climb the sloping hill or snake up the wooden steps. The teenagers, the younger adults, or those without early bedtime head down for a final round of beer. A pile of broken freight palettes has been assembled by city officials a little further to the left, well clear of the tree line. A few additional burnable offerings found their way there during the day. Nicky is sure he saw a door and splinters from a bed frame as well as smaller items: the candles with wishes carved in wax and the strip of clothes bundled into the wood.

“I wonder if they will use the wedding dress as the tinder,” Joe says as they are untangling, limbs cold and numb from sitting on the ground so long. 

“How can you be so sure it was a wedding dress and not something else bundled in fabric?”

“Not with lace and beading like that, Nicolò. Especially not the way all that expensive trim was slashed and torn. That was someone’s broken heart.”

The synthetic silk does catch fire like the best of tinder, flaring up and melting into the worn down wood. Long before the fire goes down — or before the volunteer firefighters decide the drunks have been sufficiently placated and start pumping river water over it — Joe takes Nicky’s hand and leads him away. They have their own plans for the warm summer night. 

The woman comes back the next week, on the mid-week holiday that celebrates the rest of the country but really only highlights pizza sales for the locals. She strolls once through the paths before stopping at the stained glass window. She reaches to trace the arch of the wood with her finger tips before snatching her hand away as if it had bit her. Nicky notices her hasty retreat but can find no splinters or rough areas on the weather worn display. 

“What do you expect to see in the glass?” 

She jumps back, startled, scared. The wide alarm in her eyes gives way to guarded mistrust. “What?” 

Nicky raises his hands in the universal sign of placation, to display he’s not a threat. Not outwardly anyway. He’s wearing jeans that have been cut and frayed at the knees, a simple cotton shirt, and the dirt of the morning’s weeding. No weapons, not even a spade, though that isn’t a fair indication of danger he guesses. Not with who he is, as a person, when he’s not hiding. 

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says with a smile. “But I couldn’t help but notice. We don’t get that many repeat visitors…” He waits for her to shrug, for the reflexive defense response.

“You work here? I haven’t seen you before.”

“For the season. My name’s Nicky.”

“Florence.” She hesitates, torn between the remaining suspicion or shyness and social mores. In the end the reservation wins and she wraps her arms around herself in a self soothing hug instead of extending her hand to shake. 

“Beautiful name and a beautiful city.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Many times.”

“Nicky. That’s a… Nickname?”

He nods “Short for Nicolò.”

“My parents met on a trip to Italy, it’s why they picked the name. So I would be a stand-in for a memory.”

“Did you ever visit? Make memories of your own?”

“I was supposed to...” Her voice trails off in a half hitched gulp of air. “Excuse me.” She walks away without meeting Nicky’s eye.

“I see you still have a magical touch with ladies,” Joe says over Nicky’s shoulder, watching her go. “Booker did offer to teach you, you know.” 

Nicky throws his head back and laughs. “I would be terrified of any woman Booker would try to introduce me to in order to practice flirting skills I have no use for.” 

Joe rewards him with a wink.

It rains the next Friday and Florence stands by the stained-glass window with a polka dot raincoat. It barely reaches her knees and lacks a hood, so the rain plasters her hair into ink streaks along her face. Joe nudges Nicky from the window and points outside with his chin. 

“Take the blue one,” he says. “It fits two.”

Joe is right, of course. The blue umbrella is meant for golf and can spawn an entire family if they huddle for warmth. The summer rain is warm, there is no need to huddle. Nicky held it above her head, standing as far back as he could. Water beads on the nylon of his jacket, light as air on his shoulders. They have come a long way from blubber saturated leather and waxed canvas.

“It’s supposed to be good luck,” Florence says. “Rain on a wedding day means a happy marriage.”

“Today was the day?”

She nods. “We were going to take our pictures here. My dress had floral lace, I got it made from the fabric of my grandmother’s dress. Perfect. It was supposed to be perfect. It’s all ashes now.”

“What happened?”

“I did.”

Nicky doesn’t answer, lets the silence build under the rain. Either she will continue the story or decide that was enough for one day. Florence stares at the glass until a shiver runs through her, shaking droplets off her hair. 

“You will catch a cold. Come inside to dry off."

He thinks he pushed too hard, too fast. That she isn’t ready for the friendly overture despite the loneliness that all but screams from her. He is proven wrong. She nods and follows him when he turns to walk back to the house. 

Joe is waiting for them in what was once the formal sitting room. It has been remade into some variation of a den. There is a large couch and a pair of armchairs arranged around a coffee table. The design choices were made for conversation more than the modern screen worship.

"Here's a towel," he says as he hands her one. "I made tea. I hope you like it."

“This is Joe,” Nicky says by way of introductions. “I will get us food.”

There's not much in the kitchen, they had not been expecting company and it is too early for dinner preparations. Nicky grabs the noticeably emptier plate of cucidati, rearranging the slices around to make it a bit more presentable. Francis had teared up when Nicky’d pulled them from the oven. The cookies weren’t quite right -- the spice mix is not quite on point -- but they matched his memories of childhood more closely than anything from the local supermarket. 

Florence does not seem to share those memories. She looks at the plate with polite distrust and holds the tea cup a little firmer with both of her hands. Somehow in the minute it took Nicky to leave and come back, Joe has gotten her comfortable enough to sit, with her hair in a towel turban. Color is returning to her skin as the hypothermia shakes lessen. If it wasn’t for the tension in her eyes she’d almost look better.

“What do you mean, that you happened?” Nicky says as he sits down in the other armchair by habit. It has become his armchair as of late. 

A jolt of tension shoots through Florence. She’s good at hiding it, could have fooled most people. Joe sees it and immediately his hands come up in a placating gesture.

“I should go, habibi, let you talk with your friend.”

It’s the endearment that does it. She relaxes against the fabric of the couch into a half slouch. “No. Stay.”

Joe sits on the oversized arm of the chair, one leg bracing against the floor, one folded so that he can rest his hands on his knee. Nicky leans towards his warmth like he always does. It’s deeper than instinct. He could not resist it anymore than the sunflower can resist the sun.

“How long have you been together?”

“A long time,” Nicky answers with a shrug and a smile.

“You like those vague answers, don’t you?” Half barb, half joke from her tone and if there is a smile, she hides it behind the rim of her teacup.

“My Nicky has disagreements with most time keeping methods,” Joe teases. 

"So I shouldn't ask how old you are?"

"No. No you really shouldn't," Joe shakes his head with mirth.

"Traitor," Nicky mumbles and he punches Joe's leg. There is no heat in the word, no strength in the hit. It's an old song and dance.

“You’re adorable,” she laughs. It shakes out of her in clusters, up and down with the rhythm of her breath. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You may,” Nicky answers. Then he adds with a raised eyebrow at Joe he adds, “if you don’t make fun of my answers.”

“And now I don’t know how to say it without being offensive, so I am sorry… How did your families take it, when you got together? How did you make it work?”

Joe swallows his answer behind an ugly snort of a laugh. He elbows Nicky, making it clear he isn’t even going to try and answer. Nicky opens his mouth a few times, trying to shake the very modern idea of introducing Yusuf as his lover to his parents after a few dates. Only with the dust of Jerusalem still ground into his skin and, as far as his mother knew, the weight of priesthood still on his shoulders.

“That would have been a... spectacularly bad idea,” Nicky says at last. 

“Ну не знаю.” Joe whispered through his laughter. “Просто интересно, сколько часов они бы заставили тебя простоять на коленях. Интересно для меня, по крайней мере”

Florence looks at him and tilts her head in confusion. Nicky can see the exact moment she catches the growing redness on his cheeks, the flush racing down his neck. Because after so many years, Joe can still make him blush whenever he wants. It’s a very specialized skill. 

“I won’t ask,” she says. “I can guess…” She laughs, her own cheeks turning red as her mind races along the language she doesn't speak and paints pictures probably far more graphic then the gentle innuendo. Then the smile drops, gradually. “I guess that’d have solved some of it. If we’d been able to just run away.”

“If it was an option, why didn’t you?”

She scrunched her nose and frowned. “Well. It would have been… a bit hypocritical. It’s not my family I would have been cutting off.” 

“So his people?” Nicky leaves the sentence unfinished and open ended. 

“Yeah… _Qui prend mari prend pays_. There wouldn’t have been any actually moving involved but…” 

“Sometimes the culture shock is the same,” Joe says with a nod.

“Exactly. And I tried, I tried so hard and for so long to make them like me, to make them want to see _him_ happy even if they hated me. Even if they spewed their hatred on everything and everyone that isn’t _perfectly like them_.“ The words come pouring out of her in clumps and halted broken sentences. “Jonathan didn’t see it, because… Actually I don’t know why and it doesn’t matter anyway. I made myself silent and small and I dealt with it.”

“Until you couldn’t,” Nicky finishes for her.

“I didn’t recognise the person who was standing in that mirror, wearing my heirloom dress. She wasn’t me. She was the sad shriveled thing I would have to pretend to be… and I couldn’t do it. I called everything off, lost the deposits. Jonathan said… horrible things when I told him. Things I didn’t think he’d ever say to me. And yet… I come here, and I listen to all the messages on my phone... All I can think is that I made a mistake.”

“You didn’t.” Nicky leans forward, anchors his elbows on his knees and keeps his hands low. He waits until she meets his eyes, reads the surprise and the relief there. It wasn’t the answer she was expecting. Probably not the one she heard from her circles. 

“Love, the kind that lasts anyways, is ultimately a movement from yourself to yourself.” Nicky pauses, cursing the poverty of modern English. There are at least a dozen dialects that would have better words for what he is trying to say. “If you pour and pour and give away all that you have and don’t receive it back, it is not love. It is just... Opportunity and tragedy.” 

“Is that what you have?” She looks at Joe as she asks, bouncing between his eyes and Nicky’s. 

“It is now,” Joe says as he reaches out to squeeze Nicky’s shoulder. “It wasn’t always. But we learned. I would give everything that is mine to give for Nicky.”

“So would I—”

 _“Ya allah, a'ref_. My point is…” He stops and falters. Nicky smiles. His Yusuf is deciding if he is being too intense and then, as usual, he goes for broke. “All that is me, I can give. And while Nicky would give _me_ all I ever ask for, I cannot pledge his time and services and talents like I would my own. That would only breed exhaustion and resentment.” 

Nicky nods. There had been a few years, and the odd decade, where they’d not yet learned this lesson or forgotten it. Mending what got worn down in those bad patches always took longer than it had for the damage to occur.

“It seems to me,” Nicky picked up where Joe had trailed off in his own recollection, “that your situation was like that. That you gave of yourself, and your _intended_ promised more and more without giving back and left you drained. There is nothing shameful about saying ‘no more’ and letting self-preservation win.” 

“Oh,” Florence said. She puts the empty teacup on the table with a shaking hand. “I guess... I never saw it that way.” Tears run down from her eyes, following the paths carved by the rain. She does nothing to stop them and Nicky knows better than to bring attention to the crying. It seems to be a long overdue catharsis. 

“Most people don’t,” Nicky says. “The movies and what they call romcoms certainly don’t.”

“Neither do the books nor the plays,” Joe adds. “Which is a shame.”

No one speaks after that. Nicky settles back into the chair and Joe’s hand lands lightly on his back. There is nothing to break the silence but the sound of water through the eaves and the gentle ticking of a clock. The sticky hinge of the front door screams through the house, jolting Florence in surprise. 

“Oh, _pardon_. Didn’t know you had a guest,” Francis says as he passes the living room. He holds paper bags against his chest. “I’ll just drop these and be out of your hair.”

“No, no. _C’est moi qui s’excuse_ ,” Florence says as she rubs her face with the corner of her still damp towel. “I’m the one imposing.” 

Francis shrugs and makes for the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets loudly enough to signal his presence. 

“So. What do I do now? Where do I go from here?” She asks to the room, or maybe to herself.

“You move forward. You go anywhere but back,” Nicky says. He wants to add that what was there no longer exists, even if the places and the people still do. And the pantomime only hurts more when the absence is fresh.

“You have so much time,” Joe picks up where Nicky had stopped. “Take some for yourself. Heal. Then let yourself take a chance.” 

“On what?”

“I don’t know. But you _will_.” 

“Perhaps.” 

_“Je prépare combien de portions?”_ Francis asks, popping his head back in. 

“ _Je ne reste pas, merci_ ” She drops the towel on the table. “It stopped raining. I should go. Thank you. For the tea.” 

“It was our pleasure,” Nicky says. He walks her out the door and into the warm humidity of summer after the rain. The light catches on the droplets, hanging golden all around them. There is less tension around her shoulders as she walks up the path and out towards the street. It’s not much. One good purge of bottled emotions and the seed of possible growth. He clings to it nonetheless. To the idea that maybe they did something good for one person if not the world. The right thing. Without any blood shed.

Nicky sees Florence once again as September thins the days into fragile slivers against the cold. She’s in the garden again, but this time she doesn’t stop at the stained glass window, walking all the paths in a circuit as though she is committing them to memory or thanking them for their service. Most of the bloom is over, leaving foliage and branches to hold the ghost of perfume. She meets his eye and nods, once, and she smiles.

In October, Nicky rakes the fallen leaves, focuses on the golds and on the frost rather than the red, red, red that spreads on the ground before him. Joe finds him there, stopped somewhere past the pond and holds him, rubbing warmth back in his arms and against his back. 

“Guess who was having the cutest _tête-à-tête?_ ” he asks with a smile. He doesn’t mention where, there is only one restaurant worthy of being a date destination, afterall. 

“Really?”

“Hum hum, Sarah said it’s not the first time. I brought you cheesecake.”

“You spoil me. “

Joe laughs loud enough to startle a couple of squirrels, sending them running for the naked trees with a clatter of claws. “As if I could really ever give you all that you deserve.”

When there are no more leaves to rake and gather, no more plants to cut back, to cover with burlap and cones, Nicky feels restless. Outside the window the garden sleeps, covered by the morning’s frost. It’s not enough to stay and will be gone when the sun rises properly. The days are short, but the ice doesn’t have dominion yet. 

“Everything is packed, _habibi_.”

“Should we leave a note?” Nicky asks. “So our landlord doesn’t worry?”

“It’s better if we don’t. Come. You are wearing too many layers and we have many miles to go before I can fix that.”

Nicky shakes his head. “It is not me running from the snow, _tesoro_. And the sands of Turkey are a bit extreme. We could find a middle ground”

“Where would be the fun in that?”

They leave like they had come: silent and in the night. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Emptiness of Burning Cities](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28814112) by [treefrogie84](https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84)




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